Will Oremus at Slate on the (bland) future of food: Like garlic mashed potatoes? Good, we may be eating a lot of it in the future. Turns out roots and tubers pack the biggest caloric punches and nutritional values for the resources (land, water, time) needed to grow them. Conserving arable land in a world of climate change, biofuels, and “peak soil” will require those humans who “eat like Westerners” to rethink their diet. That is, if we want to avoid mass starvation. “In short, there’s enough land to feed the world -- but not enough to feed the world Big Macs.” Sorry, Atkins dieters, but meat and dairy are more energy-intensive, with every pound of edible beef needing 20 pounds of grain to produce. “Give a man a 12-ounce porterhouse and you feed him for a day,” writes Oremus. “Give him a pound of grain and you can feed a dozen other people for a day, too.” And when you give him a sack of potatoes? Pass the salt …

Elisabeth Rosenthal in the New York Times on Canada’s pipeline contingency plan: Canada isn’t waiting around for the U.S. to decide if we will allow tar sands oil to be piped through the Midwest to the Gulf Coast. The country is looking for alternative ways to get its 200 billion barrels of oil reserves out of pipeline bottlenecks, into refineries, and off to China. Will the next pipeline battle be in British Columbia? Quebec? Vermont? We’ll have to wait and see, but the government is streamlining approval processes, hindering public comment, and bullying those who stand in the way. For instance, Canada’s version of our Homeland Security Department “has classified environmentalists as a potential source of domestic terrorism, adding them to a list that includes white supremacists.”

David Biello in OnEarth on cooling down the Internet: The giant servers that make the Internet possible contribute to around 230 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. “The ethereal world of the Web has a very real physical presence,” Biello writes. “Behind every Google search, Facebook update, or Twitter tweet lies a gigantic computing infrastructure.” As the servers process information, they emit lots of heat and keeping the computers cool and functional requires massive amounts of electricity (think fully blasting ACs 24-7). But deep within an Norwegian fjord, an abandoned mine could become the site of the world’s largest and greenest server farm. Here, renewable energy from nearby wind turbines and hydroelectric dams will power the facility. And that heat problem? Naturally cool air and icy seawater pumped from 650 feet below sea level will help chill things out.

Stephen Trimble in the Washington Post on fighting obesity at the bodega: On corners in inner-city neighborhoods, Philadelphians are pushing … produce. A new $900,000 initiative is equipping corner stores with fridges and encouraging owners to sell more fruits and veggies. Why? To give low-income communities better access to healthier foods. Currently, Philly takes first prize in having the highest obesity rate and the poorest population of any major American city. So will people pass over the candy aisle for the new fruit stand or will store owners “watch profits rot away.” Nobody knows. But the city is watching closely, launching the largest study ever on whether healthy food placed in front of peoples’ noses also ends up in their mouths. Trimble writes, “the results could steer the course of American food policy.”

Sophie Quinton in the National Journal on pests in the pines: “The best way to view the effects of climate change in Colorado, it turns out, is from a car,” writes Quinton. The once lush countryside has turned from green to red to grey in the wake of the mountain pine beetle. This isn’t news. The insect has been attacking western forests for decades as warmer winters fail to kill off the bug, which has migrated as far north as Canada’s Yukon. Many think that the dead, dry forests -- being such a strikingly visual manifestation of climate change -- should have sparked action in Colorado as well as in Congress by now. But as Howard Hallman of the Forest Health Task Force explains, “We have people who are saying, well, it doesn’t exist, and not only it doesn’t exist, but if you believe it exists, you are somehow -- you are at least a socialist, if not a communist … That’s not a good starting point.”

OnEarth is published by the Natural Resources Defense Council. The opinions expressed by its editors and writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of NRDC. Learn more.